Welcome to the latest edition of our regular crowdfunding feature here on Nerdly – Back This! – where we take a look at some of the cool content taking the crowdfunding route on sites such as Indiegogo, Sponsume and Kickstarter. This special edition is for a campaign very close to Nerdly’s heart: a Kickstarter to fund the production of a full colour, paperback book of the complete series of 80s-themed baseball comic Alien in the Outfield, by Nerdly’s very own Jack Kirby (no, not that one) and Matt Barnett.

Alien in the Outfield follows the Joel, a lonely kid who befriends an alien on the run from the FBI. The duo join the Roswell Rockets, New Mexico’s worst little league baseball team, whose fortunes change when the alien brings his out-of-this- world skills to the party! Together, Joel and alien must evade capture by the Feds, get alien back to his home planet and help the Roswell Rockets win the league!

An all-ages series that is a perfect gateway to the wonderful world of comics for younger readers, Alien in the Outfield is set in the 80s and provides countless references and homages to films, TV shows, music and culture of the decade that understatement forgot, to the delight of the older reader. The series hops across genres such as sci-fi spectacular, comedy caper, underdog sports adventure and teen coming-of-age drama to create a loving tribute to pop- culture, family-storytelling and of course, comic books.

The original comic run – of four books – have been met with great enthusiasm by comic readers in the UK and beyond and creators Mat Barnett and Jack RB Kirby have sold out multiple print runs at comic conventions across the country. Putting the series into colour in a collected graphic novel format has been a long held dream for the pair and [hopefully] this Kickstarter campaign will hopefully make that come true!

“We’ve got some great rewards for backers, including copies of the book, special artwork and even our team uniform t- shirts, which are rad as heck”, says writer Jack RB Kirby. “As so much of the comic has already been created through self-funding and self-publishing, our funding target is a quite modest £800—hopefully out fans will get behind this final step in the journey” adds artist Mat Barnett.

Pledges start at a mere £1 and perks for backing the campaign include digital and physical copies of the collected paperback (obviously) as well as digital and physical art prints, Roswell Rockets replica shirts, “movie” posters and, at the highest tier, the opportunity to actually appear in the book!

TheAlien in the Outfield Kickstarter campaign started last Tuesday (July 4th) and still has almost a month to go, which means there’s plenty of time to grab some perks, and more importantly back this project – but don’t just take my word for it, check out the campaign video from Jack and Matt below: